8 INDUSTRY

All the lost mines of Mexico, all the argosies that ever sailed from the Indies, all the gold and silver-laden ships of the treasure fleets of storied Spain, count no more in value than a beggar’s dole compared to the wealth that is created every eight hours by modern business ideas.

Opportunity follows perception, action follows inspiration, growth follows knowledge, environment follows progress, always the mental first, then the transformation into the illimitable possibilities of character and achievement.

The progress of the United States is due to two per cent of its population. In other words, all our railroads, all our telephones, our automobiles, our libraries, our newspapers, and a thousand other conveniences, comforts and necessities are due to the creative genius to two per cent of the population.

As a natural consequence, the same two percent are the millionaires of our country. Now, who are these millionaires, these creative geniuses, these men of ability and energy, to whom we owe practically all the benefits of civilization? The same authority tells us that thirty per cent of them are the sons of poor preachers who had never earned more than $1,500 a year; twenty-five per cent were the sons of teachers, doctors, and country lawyers; and only five per cent were the sons of bankers.

We are interested, therefore, in ascertaining why the two per cent succeeded in acquiring all that is best in life, and the ninety-eight per cent remain in perpetual want. We know that this is not a matter of chance, because the universe as we know it, is governed by law. Law governs solar systems, sun, stars, planets. Law governs every form of light, heat, sound, and energy. Law governs every material thing and every immaterial thought. Law covers the earth with beauty and fills it with bounty--shall we then not be certain that it also governs the distribution of this bounty?

Financial affairs are governed by law just as surely, just as positively, just as definitely as health, growth, harmony, or any other condition in life, and the law is one with which anyone can comply.

Many are already unconsciously complying with this law; others are consciously coming into harmony with it.

Compliance with the law means joining the ranks of the two per cent; in fact, the new ear, the golden age, the industrial emancipation, means that the two per cent is about to expand until the prevailing conditions shall have been reversed--the two per cent will soon become the ninety-eight per cent.

In seeking the truth we are seeking ultimate cause; we know that every human experience is an effect; therefore, if we may ascertain the cause, and if we shall find that this cause is one which we can consciously control, the effect or the experience will be within our control also.

Human experience will then no longer be the football of fate; a man will not be the child of fortune; but destiny, fate and fortune will be controlled as readily as a captain controls his vessel, or an engineer his train.

All things are finally resolvable into the same element, and as they are thus translatable, one into the other, they must ever be in relation and many never be in opposition to one another.

In the physical world there are innumerable contrasts, and these may, for the sake of convenience, be designated by distinctive names. There are surfaces, colors, shades, dimensions, or ends to all things. There is a North Pole; and a South Pole; an inside and an outside; a seen and an unseen; but these expressions merely serve to place extremes in contrast.

They are names given to two different parts or aspects of the same quantity. The two extremes are relative; they are not separate entities, but are two parts or aspects of one whole.

In the mental world we find the same law. We speak of knowledge and ignorance, but ignorance is but a lack of knowledge and is therefore found to be simply a word to express the absence of knowledge; it has no principle in itself.

In the moral world we speak of good and evil, but upon investigation, we find that good and evil are but relative terms. Thought precedes and predetermines action; if this action results in benefit to ourselves and others, we call this result good. If this result is to the disadvantage of ourselves and others, we call it evil. Good and evil are therefore found to be simply words which have been coined to indicate the result of our actions, which in turn are the result of our thoughts.

In the Industrial World, we speak of Labor and Capital as if there were two separate and distinct classes, but Capital is wealth and wealth is a product of Labor, and Labor necessarily includes Industry of every kind--physical, mental, executive, and professional. Every man or woman who depends in whole or in part for his or her income upon the results of their effort in the Industrial World must be classed as Labor. We therefore find that in the Industrial World there is but one Principle and that is Labor, or Industry.

There are many who are seriously and earnestly trying to find the solution to the present industrial and social chaos, and we hear much of production, waste, efficiency--and sometimes something in regard to constructive thinking.

The thought that humanity is one the borderland of a new idea, that the dawn of a new era is at hand, that a new epoch in the history of the world is about to take place, is rapidly spreading from mind to mind, and is changing the preconceived ideas of man and his relation to Industry.

We know that every condition is the result of a cause, and that the same cause invariably produces the same result. What has been the cause of similar changes in the thought of the world; the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution? Always the discovery and discussion of new knowledge.

The elimination of competition by the centralization of industry into corporations and trusts, and the economies resulting therefrom, have set man to thinking.

He sees that competition is not necessary to progress and he is asking: “What will be the outcome of the evolution which is taking place in the Industrial World?” And gradually the thought begins to dawn, the thought which is rapidly germinating, which is about to burst forth in the minds of all men everywhere, the thought which is carrying men off their feet and crowding out every selfish idea, the thought that the emancipation of the Industrial World is at hand.

This is the thought which is arousing the enthusiasm of mankind as never before; this is the thought which is centralizing force and energy, and which will destroy every barrier between itself and its purpose. It is not a vision of the future; it is a vision of the present; it is at the door--and the door is open.

The creative instinct in the individual is his spiritual nature; it is a reflection of the Universal Creative Principle; it is therefore instinctive and innate; it cannot be eradicated; it can only be perverted.

Owing to the changes which have taken place in the Industrial World, this creative instinct no longer finds expression; a man cannot build his own house; he can no longer make his own garden; he can by no manner of means direct his own labor; he is therefore deprived of the greatest joy which can come to the individual, the joy of creating, of achievement; and so this great power for good is perverted and turned into destructive channels; becoming envious, he attempts to destroy the works of his more fortunate fellows.

Thought results in action. If we wish to change the nature of the action, we must change the thought, and the only way to change the thought is to substitute a healthy mental attitude for the chaotic mental conditions existing at present.

It is evident that the power of thought is by far the greatest power in existence; it is the power which controls every other power, and while this knowledge has until recently been the possession of the few, it is about to become the priceless privilege of the many. Those who have the imagination, the vision, will see the opportunity of directing this thought into constructive and creative channels; they will encourage and foster the spirit of mental adventure; they will arouse, develop and direct the creative instinct, in which case we shall soon see such an industrial revival as the world has never before experienced.

Henry Ford visions the approach of the new Era in The Dearborn Independent. He says: “The human race is now on the border line between two periods, the period when to use is to lose, and the period when not to use is to waste. For a long time mankind has been conscious of somehow coming to the end of irresponsible childhood; the provision made by the Parent of mankind has seemed to be coming to the end of its lavishness. That is, there has been a sense that the more we used the less we had in reserve. This feeling has been expressed in the popular adage,” you can’t eat your cake and have it.”

But now that man is learning enough to plant his supply as well as reap it, to make his supply a recurrent crop instead of a slowly diminishing original store of natural resources, the time is coming when instead of being afraid of wasting our resources by using them we shall be afraid of wasting them by not using them. The stream of supply will be so full and constant that when people worry it will not be worry about not having enough, but about not using enough.

If you can imagine a world in which the source of supply will be so plentiful that people will worry about not using enough of it, instead of worrying as we do now about using too much, you will have a picture of the world that is soon to be. We have long depended on the resources which nature long ago stored up, the resources which can be exhausted. We are entering an ear when we shall create resources which shall be so constantly renewed that the only loss will be not to use them. There will be such a plenteous supply of heat, light and power, that it will be sin not to use all we want. This era is coming in now. And it is coming by way of Water.

With the fuel question settled, and the light question settled, and the heating question settled, and the power question settled, on such terms as actually liberate the whole world from the crushing weight of these four great burdens; and not only that, but with the whole fuel and light and heat and power situation turned around so that people will have to use all that they want, in order to prevent waste--don’t you see how economic life will swing loose and breathe deeply, as if a new spring day had downed for humanity?

That is the era we are approaching. There is no question about that. There will be, of course, the usual preliminary skirmish between selfishness and service, but service will win. The ownership of a coal mine located on a man’s property may easily be granted to private parties but the ownership of a river? Nature itself rebukes the man who would claim ownership of a river.

Our next period is before us, not the first period of reckless waste, nor the second period of anxious accounting, but the third period of overlapping abundance which compels us to use and use and use, to fulfill every need.”

Thought is mind in motion, just as wind is air in motion. Mind is spiritual activity; in fact, it is the only activity which the spiritual man possesses, and Spirit is the creative Principle of the Universe.

Therefore, when we think, we start a train of causation; the thoughts go forth and meet other similar thoughts; they coalesce and form ideas; the ideas now exist independently of the thinker; they are the invisible seeds which exist everywhere, and which sprout and grow and bring forth fruit, some an hundred--and some a thousandfold.

We have been led to believe, and many still seem to think, that Wealth is something very material and tangible; that we can secure and hold it for our own exclusive use and benefit. We somehow forget that all the gold in the world only amounts to a very few dollars per capita. The entire supply of gold for the world is only eight billion dollars.

This includes all the gold coined or in bars in the various banks or Government treasuries of the world. This quantity of gold could be easily contained in a sixty-foot cube. If we depended upon the supply of gold it would be exhausted in a single day, and yet with this as a basis we spend hundreds and thousands, millions and now billions, of dollars daily, and yet the original supply of gold is not altered. The gold is simply a measure, a rule; with one ruler we may measure thousands and hundreds of thousands of feet, so with one $5 bill hundreds and thousands and millions of people may have the use of it by simply passing it from one to the other.

So it is that if we can only keep the tokens of wealth, which we call money, circulating, everyone could have all he or she might want; there need be no lack. The sense of lack comes only when we begin to hoard, when we are seized with fear and panic and fail to give out, to release.

It is therefore evident that the only way we can get any benefit from wealth is by its use, and to use it we must give it out, so that someone else can get the benefit of it; we are then co-operating for our mutual benefit and putting the law of abundance into practical operation.

We also see that wealth is by no means as substantial and tangible as many supposed, but that, on the contrary, the only way to get it is to keep it going; as soon as there is any concerted movement whereby there is any danger of stopping the circulation of this medium of exchange there is stagnation, fever, panic, and industrial death.

It is this intangible nature of wealth that makes it peculiarly susceptible to the power of thought and has enabled many men to secure fortunes in a year or two which others could not hope to acquire in a lifetime of effort. This is due to the creative power of mind.

Helen Wilmans gives an interesting description of the practical operation of this law in “The Conquest of Poverty.” She says:

“There is an almost universal reaching out for money. This reaching out is from the acquisitive faculties only, and it operations are confined to the competitive realm of the business world. it is a purely external proceeding; its mode of action is not rooted in the knowledge of the inner life, with its finer, more just, and spiritualized wants. It is but an extension of animality into the realm of the human, and no power can lift it to the divine plane the race is now approaching.

“For all lifting on this plane is the result of spiritual growth. It is doing just what Christ said we must do in order to be rich. It is first seeking the kingdom of heaven within, where alone it exists. After this kingdom is discovered, then all these things (external wealth) shall be added.

“What is there within a man that can be called the kingdom of heaven? When I answer this question not one reader out of ten will believe me--so utterly bankrupt of knowledge of their own internal wealth are the great majority of people. But I shall answer it, nevertheless, and it will be answered truly.

“Heaven exists within us in the faculties latent in the human brain, the superabundance of which no man has ever dreamed. The weakest man living has the powers of a God folded within his organization; and they will remain folded until he learns to believe in their existence, and then tries to develop them. Men generally are not introspective, and this is why they are not rich. They are poverty-stricken in their own opinions of themselves and their powers, and they put the stamp of their belief on everything they come in contact with. If a day laborer, let us say, does but look within himself long enough to perceive that he has an intellect that can be made as great and far reaching as that of the man he serves; if he sees this, and attaches due importance to it, the mere fact of his seeing it, has, to a degree, loosened his bonds and brought him face to face with better conditions.

“But there is wanted something more than the fact of knowing that he is, or may become, by recognition of self, his employer’s intellectual equal. There remains the fact that he needs also to know the Law and claims its provisions; namely, that his superior knowing relates him to a superior position. He must know this and trust it; for it is by holding this truth in faith and trust that he beings to ascend bodily. Employers everywhere hail with delight the acquisition of employees who are not mere machines--they want brains in their business and are glad to pay for them. Cheap help is often the most expensive, in the sense of being the least profitable. As brain growth or development of thought power in the employee increases his value to the employer, and as the employee grows to the degree of strength where he is capable of doing for himself, there will be another not yet grown so strong to take his place.

“The gradual recognition by a man of his own latent powers is the heaven within that is to be brought forward in the world and established in these conditions which correlate it.

“A mental poor-house projects from itself the spirit of a visible poor-house, and this spirit expresses itself in visible externals correlated to its character.

“A mental palace sends forth the spirit of a visible with results that correlate it. And the same may be said of sickness and sin, of health and goodness.”